These days there is a lot of talk about A.I. killing industries. Industries like the financial world, logistics, food service, and art. At first, I got a little worried about it as an artist. I saw the ease with which people could attain 10 images of them self in 10 different styles. Filters for digital photos that could edit the image on its own. You could ad folks to video that aren’t there. All very good, so much so that Hollywood is on strike; and A.I. is one of the things on the negotiating table.
So it is in this climate, as an artist I ask myself “AM I Still relevant?” I am a painter first; it is what I love, what I dreamed of doing as a kid, and it’s the medium I most work at. I also draw, photograph, write, cartoon, and I enjoy improving bits with friends. Does A.I. do these? Yes it does. What’s missing? The true human experience. The A.I. gathers info, splices it, and then redistributes it. As a human, I gather information, I splice it, then it affects me emotionally. I experience it, feel it, think about it, and present it from my own place. Distributing it to a market of other humans experiencing the world. Does A.I. experience things emotionally? Can it reach that state? Can it fake emotion, like a psychopath?
I have a friend that drives huge trucks, and delivers up to 80tons of gravel or asphalt to work sites. He follows a GPS system that gets him to the sites, Once there he usually has to dismount his truck, and walk around evaluating how is going to get that truck in, deliver the load and get it out. These are huge, long, double load semi’s with 2 pivot points. He has 1st see if the street is wide enough, many times they are not. So he has to survey the landscape and surrounding area to see how to deliver the load without dumping it, getting the truck stuck in soft ground, stuck without a way to back out, turn around or even around a corner. A. I. cant go into your home diagnose a plumbing problem and repair it. Do you know how many engineers are working on duplicating our hand dexterity? I lost a leg, and even though I have a top of theline prosthetic with computer; it is not at all like a real leg.
So I do not feel threatened by A.I. because there is always a place for the work of human hands, human emmotions, and human experience. I open my heart and my mind to the world; to people I don’t know. I express my inner thoughts through subjects, colors, lines, angles, lat outs. I go throw things that others do as well. Maybe they see themselves there, maybe it offends them. It is at the end of it, a fellow human crying out in creative way the emmotions this human experience has fostered within. A.I. could never kill the human hand.
